Overdue Conversations

By Mokshda Jailkhani

“OVERDUE CONVERSATIONS” is a collection of short, heartwarming, feel-good prose pieces that will have readers living a little bit of life with each page they turn. This compilation consists of essays written on matters of the heart, the simplest yet the most neglected human emotions, feelings and thoughts that are taught to be taboo to even experience internally, and brings to light everything that we never give ourselves permission or time to experience. The chapters acknowledge, validate and even celebrate having a goal but being too scared, being a sensitive person in a metal-hearted world, accepting that goals can be worked towards without suffering, the superpower of being able to cry when we need to, finding the beauty within and slowing down to smell the flowers or speeding up to plant the seeds because really, that’s a choice, and all around being an unapologetically human slice of life that feels each feeling there is to feel and cries each tear we have always been forbidden to, without assigning any labels to ourselves and to everyone else. Most of the chapters are written in a conversational or sometimes self-talk style in order to make the flow of sentences more expressive and relatable as opposed to instructional or exclusive (as sometimes seen in self-help or inner management books) to make the reader feel comforted, accepted and seen, and to help them see how we are more alike than we are different.
Let ‘The golden idiot’ make you see how precious you are even though your love and surrender towards that person was betrayed. Let ‘Bring it on!’ make you see how in-love you are with basic humanness and how organically, ‘severely’ beautiful you are when you do something as simple as wipe the sweat off your face. Let ‘Bittersweet’ re-acquaint you with all the pain you have endured, and from that pain, help you extract your new, scarred, warrior self, and immerse yourself in the acceptance of being ‘different’ as ‘What are you?’ holds your hand in the awareness that so many of us feel this way, and that’s okay. The intricately woven prose collection in “Overdue Conversations” promises to touch on human connections and intrapersonal relationships like never before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Jun 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9789356673274

Mokshda Jailkhani

Mokshda Jailkhani is a 28-year-old, Delhi based Psychology honours graduate from Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University, India. Born and brought up in a family of musicians, theatre artists and philosophy hobbyists, it was during and after college that she started looking for ways to channelize her varied passions and talents to feed the fierce creative fire within, as knowing and being “just enough” was never enough for her. As a result, today she an accomplished performing artist and content creator with a combined social media and YouTube following of 2,50,000 and growing!Graduating with honours, being the most popular contestant on a dance reality show, struggling hard with mental and physical health, starting an obscure blog online, choreographing and directing dance and music videos, starring in a movie, she has done it all. And now Mokshda’s “Overdue Conversations” muddles all these flavours of her life experiences together and takes you on the ride of a lifetime.

Book preview

Part 1

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…Just like a glass of water at your favourite temperature when you are tired and thirsty. Just like the ones that make a glass bowl beautiful, just like air when you are suffocating, just like the beginning of a nap when you’re warm and it’s cold outside and you’re exhausted.

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–01–

Bring It On

I’m ready for you, so why don’t you bring it on? I may look like I can’t take much, but honestly, I can. It doesn’t matter if the mere sight of your eyes opening in the morning takes my breath away. I may not tell you how strong I am, but whenever you smile nervously with that little particle of bread still stuck between your teeth, all I need to do is clench my fists really hard, hold my breath steady as my heart pounds for those few seconds, then slowly release my fists and breathe out, and I’m good! Because let’s face it, you’re not that mesmerizing! Seriously, you’ve got nothing on me, my self-control, and my diamond-strong heart. It doesn’t matter that your groggy or sometimes squeaky, tired, phone voice makes my entire existence melt away, what matters is that I can listen to it while still maintaining my sanity, and a small, involuntary giggle is the only reaction that you’re even going to get, and that my friend, is strength. Your slightly sweaty hair getting tied in a bun or being casually slicked back by your tired, calloused hands? I can handle a little flutter and a smile that my lips may give away!

When they break your heart and you cry your eyes out, and those little drops of fire drip down your face and your fingers wipe them off instinctively, protectively, that power within you may make me look at you like you are the one true God, but hey, don’t overestimate yourself, because that’s about it. I mean please, I’m strong too.

Basically, you may be the most beautiful, purest thing that ever breathed and existed, but guess what? I can take a lot, so bring it on.

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–02–

Like Me

What it means to be like me is just a thought of a fickle mind. A fickle mind rooted hard in the solution, but jumbled up within the most suitable problem. Balancing on and off the world’s laughable attempt at life, where the fanciest shopping mall stands tall next to a dying teenager who has depression with a severity level that stands higher than the mall’s top floor. What it means to be like me is no question at all in this vast mirage so powerful, because the likes of me are as lost as I am, and the others don’t like me. I think; I question; I smile to myself sometimes just because I’m too tired to question. I know you do it too, so this is me telling you that I am one of you. I like you, all of you. It’s just that no matter how big you get or how much bigger you make things on the outside, what it means to be like me can only come from the inside. Once you open up the inside and stretch it out a little, you’ll know. You’ll like me. You’ll be like me.

Once you see yourself for the absolute force you really are, you’ll know that you are like me because we’re all seeking more. The difference is that you have been taught to want it on the outside, and the inside is more like me.

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–03–

Snug

This is an open invitation to nap together, to whomsoever it may concern.

My craziest fantasy is being able to say this to you or absolutely anyone without thinking about the consequences, without worrying about embarrassing myself or hurting you in any way because, fellow human, you and I deserve to live in my fantasy. A world where an invitation to nap, to comfort you by touching your hand or offering to physically support you through a painful morning workout isn’t considered predatory behaviour, but merely an exchange of humanness. A give and take of non-sexual, unfiltered, devoid of any intention; be it good or bad, humanness.

This is an invitation to the very fruitful ‘trade of snug’. Let me take away all the baggage you don’t want and don’t deserve and yet have to carry around; by giving you a warm hug and letting myself trust you to restore my broken equilibrium with a brief snuggle on the couch. Let us hold hands even though we just met and have no intention of romance, just because a run-down fort with uncontainable history within its walls seems equally exciting to both of us. Let you and I and whoever else may be willing; after having shed our socially awarded titles, lay down in the same bed comfortably with how much ever distance we want between us, post an emotionally draining day, without bringing classical physical intimacy into it and with the unflavoured, all-encompassing, transparent kind of ‘platonic but more’ intimacy raining down upon us as we share some last few tears, silence and different and similar life traumas while letting the initial, intoxicating seconds of a restful sleep envelop our little nest. Let me give you a congratulatory handshake but also throw in a casual kiss on the forehead because that day, you beat me in a competition of what we are both good at; and then the next time you lose to me, you won’t have lost to a stranger. Let me love you in ways that one piece of life loves another, and let me share mutually acceptable (even if socially strange) physical expressions of the same with you. Let us get into a trade of snug. Beyond sex, beyond familial love, an improvement from platonic affection that is usually considered proper among friends and within friendships.

Let me pull you in as we both stop holding back and make each other feel safe enough to do so. Everyone wins and no one ever goes broke. It’s never too late, invest in some snug today.

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–04–

To See It Like You Sea It

I find myself drowning more and more these days, deeper each time, happier with every drop. I constantly feel like becoming one with my natural habitat, the water that drives me and most of the planet. As I smile to myself under this dim artificial light, listening to the fierce beauty of the strong wind blowing outside, I miss the sea. It’s warmth, comfort unprecedented, the wet embrace, the sea breeze that smells like nothing else, and those small water spells that make my day better. I increasingly seek more conversation and communication with it, just as much and as strongly I look forward to our silences together. An exchange of a series of words, or sometimes a language that no one else gets. And as and when our conversation tones down and fades away, the sea gets back to its business, leaving me a helpless, breathless, lifeless spectator of its beauty, as it just breathes, walks, talks, whispers, exists, utterly unaware of its own magnificence, just lets itself flow; the flow that is the most beautiful thing in the world.

To be able to watch the sea doing what it does like how it does it. Treating everything that it comes in contact with like a source of love, acting intrigued by it with a childlike innocence, looking at everyday things like they are new, alien, and interesting, embracing them with its water, and then developing a way around them like the owner of the universe. Silent strength. No announcing, no pretence, no chaos, just beauty and the strength to endure absolutely anything. To be vast and deep, silent and strong with endless ripples, imperfection, those big waves that take my breath away; even more so when I get to know often that the sea, living in itself doesn’t know its whole strength yet. I couldn’t blame it though, for not being able to register every bit of its vast awesomeness. It takes time. It’s just that